London's contribution to the Beijing closing ceremony, featuring David Beckham, Leona Lewis and a London bus, helped BBC1 to its biggest live audience of the entire Olympic games on Sunday, August 24.

The BBC's television coverage of the 2008 Games peaked with a record audience of 6.8 million viewers in the quarter-hour from 2pm on Sunday, a 47% share of the audience, according to unofficial overnight figures.

Sunday's entire closing ceremony programme - which also featured London Mayor Boris Johnson hoisting the Olympic flag in China - averaged 5.5 million viewers between 12pm and 3.15pm on BBC1, a 42% share of the audience.

The Olympics easily had the better of ITV1's live coverage of the Formula 1 European Grand Prix, which averaged 2.6 million viewers, 20% of the audience, between 12pm and 3.10pm.

BBC1's highest 15-minute Olympic ratings peak, including highlights programmes, was recorded during BBC1's Olympics 2008: Games Today on Thursday last week, including the men's triple jump and 400m final, with 7 million viewers.

Sunday's closing ceremony coverage was followed by another Olympics programme featuring the live concert in London promoting the 2012 Games in the capital.

The concert, featuring the likes of Will Young and McFly, averaged 3.9 million viewers, 33% of the audience, between 3.15pm and 5pm. It predictably beat ITV1 film repeat Carry On Jack, which had 1.1 million viewers.

The BBC director of sport, Roger Mosey, said the last day's audience figures "confirmed the nation was hooked" on the Olympics.

"I've said before that experience confirms the line that you can never please all the people all the time," Mosey said on his BBC blog.

"But these Games have had the most positive response of any major event during my time in BBC Sport."

The BBC Trust chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, in a message to all staff in BBC Sport, said they had done a "truly magnificent job".

"The BBC comes in for a fair amount of criticism, sometimes justified and often not, so it is all the more important that the Trust underlines special achievements like this," Lyons added.

Mosey also defended the extra coverage the BBC had given to British competitors.

"These Games were unusual precisely because they had so much achievement by Team GB - so if you compare our one solitary Gold medal in Atlanta with the fantastic 19 in Beijing, then inevitably more of our airtime is going to be taken up by UK competitors," he wrote.

"For all that, I don't believe we underplayed the successes of other nations. Indeed, some people thought we devoted too much attention to Michael Phelps; and it would be hard to argue we didn't give due credit to Usain Bolt or other phenomena like the Chinese gymnasts."

On Saturday, BBC1's Olympics coverage peaked on its afternoon show with 4.3 million viewers, a 43% share of the audience, between 1.45pm and 2.15pm.

Overall, Olympics 2008 between midday and 4.30pm, which included Tom Daley's seventh place finish in the 10m diving platform final, averaged 3.7 million viewers, 40% of the audience.

At the same time on ITV1, Formula One: European Grand Prix Qualifying had 1 million viewers, while film repeat Avalanche Express averaged 600,000.

BBC1's Saturday morning show, Olympics 2008, averaged another 3.4 million viewers, 48% of the audience, between 9pm and midday. At the same time on ITV1, a Coronation Street omnibus had 300,000 viewers.

On Friday, the morning edition of BBC1's Olympics 2008 had 2 million viewers, 33% of the audience, from 9am; while the afternoon show averaged 3.1 million between 12.45pm and 5.15pm, a 37% share.

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